15 Minute Diva

I.
Work is exhausting. I have been back at the salt mines for a week and there has been no energy for blogging.

Teachers are totally and outrageously overworked. If anyone ever gives you any bullshit about how "...teachers don't really work... it's a gravy job... the lazy bastards get summers off... they are the reason the nations' children are flunking the standardized tests...they aren't smart enough to do anything else...blah, blah, blah, blah...", hit them up-side the head for me, will ya? That is fucking bullshit. But I'm too tired for a tirade today. It's Friday. And for the first time this week I'm feeling somewhat mellow.

II.
By the way, have you seen Being Julia? I loved Annette Bening, who plays a 1930's English stage actress. She is having a mid-life crisis, is unsatisfied with her life and looking for an awakening...which comes in the form of an affair with a MUCH-younger man. She really puts herself out there for love, like a girl, vulnerable and open, only to be humiliated when her young lover moves on to a girl his age. But in the end she "triumphs", using the craft with which she had grown so bored in the first place...acting.

III.
How do we "act" ourselves into holes(roles) where we don't feel alive? Do we faithfully play our parts (as bad actresses) until suddenly we realize we aren't happy? And when we finally become conscious of our predicament do we find ourselves older but no wiser? Are we ashamed to be revealed as amateurs? We search for the standard with which to judge our life, but all of the grown-ups are in meetings with financial advisors who hold a finger to their lips, ending the conversation to declare victory.

Ha! No adventure is silly, even the humiliating ones. When we discover we aren't the wise grown-up that we once pretended, all is not lost. We are still on a journey, but a fool's journey. Gracefully I move toward my mark, seeking girlish adventures. I (of course!) stumble and the audience, leaning forward in their seats, catches their breath as one. They earnestly act out the role that was written especially for them by me.